1. Field of the Invention
This invention pertains generally to tools and implements for agriculture and horticulture, and more particularly to a hand tool having jaws activated by relatively movable plural handles that facilitates the planting and removal of bulbs, plants, and seedlings.
2. Description of the Related Art
Most gardeners and landscapers plant a wide variety of plants, flowers, trees, and shrubs. The most common tools used are simple shovels of varying size. A typical procedure might be to use a spade or the like to create a hole in the ground. Unfortunately, a simple spade does not prepare a clean or consistently sized hole, and will also most commonly require careful lifting and scraping to remove soil from the earth. This process will also most commonly require the gardener to kneel on the ground and use a smaller hand trowel, shovel, or spade, to lift and scrape the soil and shape the hole. While this procedure is quite effective and does not require a significant amount of time or effort to prepare the earth for a single plant, the opposite is true when many plants are to be placed into the earth. For exemplary purposes, when a person is preparing a large number of bulbs in the spring, or removing a large number of bulbs in the fall, this process can be extremely laborious and particularly difficult owing to the need to kneel on the ground and then stand back up repeatedly. While gardening is thought of as an enjoyable and relaxing past time beneficial to one's physical and mental health and well-being, this need to repeatedly kneel and stand is simply not possible for some persons, and in other persons defeats the enjoyment, causing many to not pursue this type of gardening at all. Consequently, there has been a long felt need for an improved tool to facilitate the planting and removal of various bulbs, plants, and seedlings from the earth.
A number of artisans have devised very creative and beneficial tools that greatly facilitate the planting and removal of plants from the soil. One approach has been to provide a relatively smaller hand-held apparatus. Exemplary patents, the teachings and contents which are incorporated herein by reference, include: U.S. Pat. No. 69,642 by Disbrow, entitled “Transplanter”; U.S. Pat. No. 2,740,234 by Van Norman, entitled “Transplanter”; U.S. Pat. No. 3,319,988 by Smith, entitled “Apparatus for manually digging out sods of turf”; U.S. Pat. No. 3,460,277 by Grover et al, entitled “Transplanter”; and U.S. Pat. No. 5,156,101 by Wien, entitled “Tree transplanter”. These patents illustrate several common concepts. A plurality of blades are provided that are independently operable, and these blades penetrate the earth at various angles designed to converge towards a sharp point at or well beyond the bottom end of travel. In either case, the shape of the portion of soil that is worked upon is that of a frustum of a cone or pyramid, or, in the case of Grover et al, that of a cone. These types of tools provide a clean and rapid way of retrieving a plant from the earth, and forming a place in the earth to receive a plant removed using the tool. As useful as these tools are, there are several less-than-desirable features.
One of these less-than-desirable features is the open bottom, the size of which must be varied depending upon the soil type. In other words, in loose and sandy soil, any opening on the bottom will lead to the soil simply running out of the open bottom. For working with such loose soil, relatively longer blades are necessary that are oriented at an angle more nearly parallel to the ground and which meet in the center to define a full cone or pyramid. However, the extra weight and cost of the extra blade material is generally undesirable, unless required by loose soil. In contrast, the longer and more nearly horizontal blades are not required in more sticky soils such as common with higher clay content and sometimes in higher organic content soils. The extra blade surface area not only adds cost and weight, but in these types of soil can also make the blades harder to pierce the earth with. Instead, in such heavier soils, a geometry such as illustrated by Disbrow may be preferred.
Another sometimes beneficial and other times less-than-desirable feature is the frustum shape itself, which is consistently formed at a particular depth. When a single consistent planting depth is desired, this is beneficial. The tool operator will simply press the blades in to their limit, as they are designed, which will form the frustum enclosure. However, this also restricts the ability of a person to readily set or change the planting depth of the plant. In other words, whatever depth the tool is designed for will be the depth the tool operates at. Attempting to form a shallower opening in the earth will leave large gaps between adjacent walls of the frustum, which will allow soil to slip there between. Once again the amount of soil that will escape in these gaps will be variable dependent upon the soil type, but particularly in loose soils such as predominant sand, the blades must be fully inserted or the loose soil will simply fall out as the tool is being removed from the earth.
Yet another less-than-desirable feature is the number of separable parts, making it somewhat more clumsy to store, transport, and use the tool than would be most preferred. In the worst case, if the separable parts are separated unknowingly, such as during a rearrangement of a storage shed or garage for either winter or spring, the entire tool will be disabled until all parts are located.
In some of these patents, a person will also undesirably have to bend over to place or operate the components. This can be challenging for some gardeners.
A number of patents illustrate even larger versions of these frustum, conical, pyramidal, or even hemispherical arrangements. Exemplary patents, the teachings and contents which are incorporated herein by reference, include: U.S. Pat. No. 594,668 by Wilkens, entitled “Tree transplanter”; U.S. Pat. No. 3,191,982 by Goalard, entitled “Apparatus for transplanting plants or trees”; U.S. Pat. No. 3,713,234 by Grover et al, entitled “Transplanter with stress compensating blade guide means”; and U.S. Pat. No. 5,485,691 by Stevens et al, entitled “Apparatus for excavating and transplanting trees and the like and method of use”. While these types of apparatus are extremely useful for digging and moving larger plants such as large bushes and trees, they have no utility for a homeowner or gardener working with bulbs, small plants, and seedlings.
Several particularly creative and skilled artisans have addressed more of the limitations of the frustum tools. Exemplary patents, the teachings and contents which are incorporated herein by reference, include: U.S. Pat. No. 110,211 by Davis, entitled “Transplanter”; U.S. Pat. No. 541,841 by Doyle, entitled “Transplanter”; U.S. Pat. No. 4,539,920 by DuFrene, entitled “Transplanters”; and U.S. Pat. No. 5,456,449 by Smith, entitled “Weed removal tool”. All of these tools are entirely contained as a single tool, with no separable parts. Doyle and Smith each require both blades to be inserted simultaneously into the earth, while the Davis and DuFrene tools each illustrate tools that may be pressed into the earth one blade at a time, allowing a person with less total force to do a better job driving the blades in. Unfortunately, the Davis and DuFrene tools suffer from the same limitations as the frustum patents described herein above. The gap between opposed blades must be determined by the soil type, making these tools less than optimum for working with the wide variety of soil types that different homeowners and gardeners may encounter. Further, the Smith patent is also somewhat inconvenient, since the design requires proper orientation for a person to use a preferred foot. In other words, most operators of the Smith tool will quickly realize that they have to orient the tool to suit their preferred “handedness”, which herein will be understood to mean a preference for stepping onto the foot engaging surface with only one of either their right foot or left foot.
Other somewhat less relevant patents, which nevertheless provide further examples of the general skill in this industry, the teachings and contents which are incorporated herein by reference, include: U.S. Pat. No. 772,097 by Hayes, entitled “Beet topper and lifter”; U.S. Pat. No. 1,187,316 by Higby, entitled “Post hole digger”; U.S. Pat. No. 2,132,795 by Minier, entitled “Culvert cleaner and post hole digger”; and U.S. Pat. No. 7,819,447 by Ange, entitled “Hand actuated soil displacement and planting device”.
In addition to the foregoing patents, Webster's New Universal Unabridged Dictionary, Second Edition copyright 1983, is incorporated herein by reference in entirety for the definitions of words and terms used herein.